First Kill??

[pj_elia]

Our guy has been at tame hack almost two weeks and he is flying stronger everyday. The first week I could feel his chest filling out more and more each day. Yesterday he was getting really close to catching one of the homers. He really put on some great chases trying to surprise attack and fly down some of them. We kept the pigeons locked in today and he decided to take one of the younger free range chickens in my sister in laws yard. He was fed up this morning in the giant hood, but I guess all that flying around made him want some lunch. I think we'll have to hack him down the road to spare some of the chickens. I know my inlaws don't like locking the chickens up. They were a little upset but I was smiling inside :D.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y186/pj_elia/downsize_2.jpg

[christopher.vly]

OOPS! clapp

[wingnut]

Damn chicken hawks. :D

[Saluqi]

I had to end my female goshawks hack at 27 days when she killed a huge old barred rock hen of my neighbors. She was mighty proud of herself!

[colelkhunter]

mmmmm. chicken and dumplins is good anytime. I think goshawks know this.

[pj_elia]

I took him to a wood lot down the road on Saturday but not until after he caught his first starling. It was a display of true aerial superiority. He was up in a tree after chasing some birds off the fist on our way to giving him his morning feeding. A few minutes later some starlings decided to leave the tree and go fly over the top of a nearby building and one misjudged the top and hit it head on and dropped straight to the ground underneath the gos. After a few seconds he sees it and flies down to get his reward. I left in the woodlot and checked him out a few hours later and he was chasing some of the birds that were harassing him. He almost got one.

Anyway, today he killed another chicken and this one was huge. He barely ate it, just the neck. I found him perched near the kill after my pissed off brother in law found the chicken.

[pj_elia]

Just wanted to follow-up a bit. As of yesterday we ended his hack. First was the brother-in-law's chickens, then was the complaints about the bird chasing swooping some of the neighbors'dogs and cats. Then we moved him to the small wooded section down the street and early this week a cop drove by my house monday evening looking for me to repsond to a lady who called about the hawk in the yard for most of the day and thought it was "lost". Then the next day my brother went to pick him up around 5pm from the wood lot and saw him on the ground. Just a slight jingle and no vocalization. At first he thought he was just playing with leaves or something as he gets closer he thought maybe its a squirrel but when he got up to him, he could see that the gos caught a wild pigeon and ate a good portion of it.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y186/pj_elia/0727111809.jpg


We decided to end the hack at this point and work on some other things. We feel it the hack has served him well in developing physically and mentally even to the point of catching wild game on his own with no food reduction. We'll see what happens when we cut his weight. He still does not like the Giant hood and would rather jump at the door than eat. We'll work on that in the short term.

[joekoz]

Looks like I won't need to wait for the picnic after all to hear about the hack. Enjoyed reading about his juvenile killing adventures. How is he compared to your other gos when he was this age?

[pj_elia]

He has been a lot more fearless and accepting of everything. He seems to want to kill things more eagerly than the last imprint. The previous ones needed some weight reduction to want to kill something. Less so with this guy.

[rahul12]

nice posts............

[FredFogg]

Any updates on the gos Paul?

[pj_elia]

The goshawk in this thread turned out to be the best imprint we've had by far. His early success and willingness to kill a young age continued through his first season. He never hesitated on ducks or rabbits from day one. He was hunted anywhere between 715 and 750g with little to no aggression or recall issues. He never needed much weight reduction to get the desired reponse. He was a very easy hawk to enter. Unfortunately during the first molt he died overnight for some unknown reason. We shipped him overnight to get a necropsy but they found no cause of death. They ruled out WNV, Asper, heat exhustion, starvation, New Castle's, parasites, poisoning, etc... We have no idea why he died.

As for the next male imprint, we raised it the same way but he was much more difficult than this bird but more typical of the other imprints. He needed significant weight reduction to get the behavior under control and he doesn't have the prey drive that this one did at a young age and at a heavy weight.